Belgrade

By Barnaby Phillips in Africa, Europe on April 27th, 2010
Picture from AFP

Africa does many things badly, but one thing especially well. It has perhaps unparalleled ability to reconcile and overcome painful divisions in the aftermath of conflict. 

I was reminded of this last week, in Belgrade, of all places, when I interviewed Boris Tadic, Serbia’s president, for the Talk to Al Jazeera programme.  He wanted to talk about the recent resolution passed by the Serbian parliament, which condemned the 1995 massacre of Bosniak Muslims at Srebrenica, carried out by Serbs.

President Tadic said he was proud of his parliament, arguing that it had shown how Serbia distanced itself from the crimes of the 1990s and "shared Western European values".

By Barnaby Phillips in Europe on March 1st, 2010

radepa3565.jpg

This will be an important week in The Hague, as the UN's International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia struggles to finally get some momentum going in the trial of the former Bosnian Serb leader, Radovan Karadzic.

One-and-a-half years have passed since that dramatic announcement in Belgrade that Karadzic, after more than a decade as a fugitive from justice, had finally been caught.

He had been disguised with a false identity, and practicing traditional medicine in the Serbian capital.

Since then, Karadzic has made only fleeting appearances in court. He boycotted the opening of his trial last October, saying he needed more time to prepare his own defence against 11 charges of genocide, crimes against humanity, and breaches of the Geneva convention during the Bosnian war.

By David Chater in Asia on December 1st, 2009
Photo by GALLO/GETTY

Biting into another Oreo made in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, I cannot escape that uncomfortable feeling I’ve lived through this moment before.

I'm sitting in much more comfortable circumstances than usual: a room in the 5-star Serena Hotel in the centre of Kabul, watching the outpourings of the cable channels across the world as President Obama’s moment of history approaches.

I began my career in journalism just as the war in Vietnam was ending. The images of that debacle - which only with hindsight now seems inevitable - did much to propel me into a career as a television correspondent and a check-in to the world’s conflict zones.

In the opening stages of the civil war in Sri Lanka I was staying in the Hotel Oberoi as the bloody pogroms against the Tamils were underway on the streets of Colombo.

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